“Oh.” I try to play it cool while my heart flops like a fresh-caught fish. It’ll show up on the phone bill. It’ll raise suspicion and give them a place to start looking.

“This isn’t your uncle’s house,” he says. It’s not a question. He’s sure.

He points to a picture on the dresser. I hadn’t noticed it before. We hadn’t noticed it before. A family on the beach. Mother, father, daughter, son, like a perfect dollhouse set. Their brown skin is warm and beautiful against the sand. They look nothing like me.

I could invent family connections to make it right. There’s no saying I couldn’t be their cousin. But I feel so suddenly tired. I am out of story to spin. “No,” I say, “it isn’t.”

“How did you know the code to get in?” he says. Dull eyes; he’s done.

I shake my head. If I talk, I’ll cry.

“My dad is buying me a ticket,” he says. He clenches his jaw. I can see the muscles move.

I don’t try to convince him to stay. I don’t want to hear all his reasons for leaving. I see them on his face. It’s more than just the house.

“I have to get to the airport,” he says.

I don’t point out how his kind of broke is not the same as mine. How he can get off this ride with a phone call. Our words don’t mean the same things. He doesn’t care anyway. I’ve fallen apart for him. The same way he’s fallen apart for me. But it hurts worse because I tried so hard to keep him together.

He goes to the bathroom to brush his teeth. I want to leave. Let him find his own way to the airport, see at least a little bit of struggle. But I don’t. I sit on the bed next to his bag. It smells like him. That mix of boy and college. The zipper isn’t closed all the way. I take one of his shirts. A long-sleeve blue one with NOFX written on the front the right way and backward on the back, like you can see through the person wearing it all the way to the underside of the letters. I take it out just to smell it, but then I hear him flush the toilet, wash his hands. Instead of putting it back in his bag, I shove it in mine. I don’t even know why I want it. He’s expensive and loud and he listens to awful music and can’t make do with what we have. It’s stupid to want him around anyway.

— Chapter 41 —